Recently unsealed warrant applications filed in Ontario Superior Court allege that Toronto Police Constable Timothy Barnhardt repeatedly searched licence-plate records on police databases and passed the resulting home addresses to people connected to organized crime, who then allegedly arranged for gunmen to be sent after a target, according to Global News. The documents allege Constable Barnhardt accepted payment from criminal contacts in exchange for the searches while he was already under police surveillance as part of the broader investigation.
The case, known as Project South, began after an alleged attempted murder at the home of a correctional officer at the Toronto South Detention Centre in June 2025. According to the Globe and Mail, the guard testified at Ontario Superior Court that the attack has left him afraid, telling the court he has been away from the institution for a year. His identity remains protected by a publication ban, and his testimony was given behind screens shielding him from public view.
Warrant applications reviewed by the Globe and Mail state that investigators suspected the attack may have been ordered by an inmate named Gurpreet Singh, who was allegedly connected to accused cocaine trafficker Ryan Wedding, with assistance from a correctional officer named Nishwant Dosanjh, who investigators say had a personal relationship with Singh. According to the Globe and Mail, a detective wrote in his warrant application that evidence suggested Singh directed the June 2025 attack through outside associates and an alleged internal facilitator, Dosanjh. Neither Singh nor Dosanjh has been criminally charged.
Dosanjh’s lawyer, Kim Schofield, said in a statement reported by the Globe and Mail that her client was treated by police as a person of interest and that Dosanjh denies any allegations of criminal or professional misconduct, maintains her complete innocence, and has cooperated fully with investigators, including by surrendering her cellphone. Global News reported the same statement, noting Dosanjh has been on paid leave from the jail since February. Singh has not publicly responded through counsel to the specific allegations, and none of the claims against either him or Dosanjh have been tested in court.
Corruption uncovered while chasing a murder plot
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw announced in February that the Project South takedown had produced criminal charges against seven serving officers, including Constable Barnhardt, one retired officer, and roughly twenty civilians, according to Global News. What is notable in the sequence of events described in the unsealed filings is that investigators were not auditing internal database use when they found the alleged leak. They were chasing leads in an attempted murder file and, according to the warrant applications, traced the guard’s address back to licence-plate searches allegedly conducted by a serving officer.
The Globe and Mail reported that the unsealed package includes more than 500 pages of information-to-obtain documents and warrant applications, released after a joint application by a media consortium, and that much of the material remains under a publication ban while a judge weighs fair-trial concerns raised by the Crown and the defence. The documents themselves note that they contain unproven allegations, and that an information-to-obtain application does not necessarily result in criminal charges.
How the outlets framed it
Global News led with the mechanics of the licence-plate searches and the timeline connecting the attempted murder to the corruption charges against Constable Barnhardt, treating the story primarily as a policing and organized-crime investigation. The Globe and Mail, drawing on the newly unsealed information-to-obtain filings, focused more on the alleged inside-outside conspiracy involving Singh and Dosanjh and on the guard’s own courtroom testimony about living in fear. Neither outlet dwelt on the fact that the alleged internal leak was discovered only because a murder plot forced investigators’ hand, rather than through any internal audit of database access working as intended. That gap between how the story was reported and what the discovery sequence implies about institutional self-policing is where the harder questions remain unasked.
Both York Regional Police, which is leading the continuing investigation, and Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General, which oversees the province’s jails, have declined to comment on specific allegations in the unsealed documents, according to the Globe and Mail’s reporting.
